I find myself beginning to lose hope that we will ever win this Endless War. Maybe we should have given it a more optimistic name.

But a shining beacon of hope has found me in my dank, semi-internetless cabin, and as I read this post, surrounded by decapitated corpses, I felt that this uplifting feeling must be passed on. For Death himself (yes, I will make gender assumptions here), has offered humanity the lifeline we so desperately need.

First of all, I had never thought to name my shovel. I’ve named my rifle (Carl), my chainsaw (Bertha), my last box of mini pizzas (12 Carl Jrs.), every maggot that comes within six feet of me and that head in the corner that looks like it is winking at me (I think he’s hitting on me. I can’t deny I haven’t thought about it, but really, can love be conceived in such hell? What future would our children have?).

Knuckle bones make great game pieces.

But my shovel – well that just seems so silly. But who am I to defy Death’s own personal recommendations? And so Shandy the Shovel has been welcomed into the fold.

But his key piece of advice – the idea that I think will see us all through these dark days – is entertainment. So simple and yet so brilliant. I personally have fashioned myself a set of both Jacks and Yahtzee using the teeth and various bones left scattered around me by the decomposing flesh of my enemies. With this, my new friend Shandy, and a potential love affair on the horizon, I think thinks are most certainly starting to look up!

This quiz really could save your life. I think we all like to imagine that we would be able to recognise the zombie apocalypse when it happens, but the truth is that there are many encounters and situations which could easily be mistaken for a zombie uprising, or vice versa. So, it is time you asked yourself…
Can you identify a zombie?

Good luck!

I wish you all the very best. Really, I do. Because the better you do, the less likely it is I will one day have to bury an axe in your skull.

And that’s not a prospect I particularly relish.

In many countries across the world the last six months have seen the people finally stand up, wrench their dismembered limbs from the slobbering gobs of the undead, and proceed to beat the political zombies roundly about the head with them. Some are still embroiled in that struggle.

But this kind of response itself actually contradicts the diagnosis of political zombieism. No, if you want to see a rising horde of political zombies, you need look no further than the maple-syrup guzzling, beaver-ridden, hockey-playing, Tim-Horton’s-chugging, apologising, baby-seal-clubbing nation of Canada, my beloved motherland. 

Perhaps the quietest zombie apocalypse took place here. There was a skirmish or two, and there existed secret pockets of survivors, cuddled up next to their laptops with only Facebook groups and the odd hashtag to spread their message of hope. But across the nation the majority seemed to have watched the decaying jaws gnawing on their fibulas and tibulas and thought “meh” before helpfully salting and offering up their juicy rumps as a suitable entrée.

"The best meat is in the rump, Mr Prime Minister. Help yourself."

It wasn’t so much that Canadians were violently oppressed, or even threatened into compliance. For almost six years it seemed as if most of them just couldn’t be bothered. They watched as the Conservative government gnawed at the Achilles tendons of Canadian women and carried on with their sudoku. They shuffled their feet awkwardly as that same government disembowelled the Kelowna accord, a $5 billion, 5 year plan to improve the lives of First Nation, Métis, and Inuit peoples. They toyed absently with their Martini olives as their elected government went all corn-on-the-cob on the sternum of global climate change efforts (a move so dastardly and low that the country risked being suspended from the Commonwealth).

And, most bizarrely, when that very government was finally given a vote of non-confidence after having been found in contempt of parliament (this is some heavy shit), a nation which should have been infuriated actually played with the possibility of giving those monsters even more power.

I had to stare at Harper's face for a gut-wrenchingly long period of time to zombify him. If he wins the election, I am going to break something.

The truth is that the number of Canadians who actively support the prospect of having their giblets roasted in the parliamentary ovens has always been the minority. But the number who have remained silent, who have holed up in their political bunkers with their tinned spam and baked beans and travel-sized Connect-Four to wait things out is disheartening to say the least.

The last six weeks, however, have finally seen a turning of the tides. The zombie hordes are not, by a long shot, defeated yet. But the number of those willing to pry their half-eaten dignity from the cold, dead hands of the Right Honourable Stephen Harper &co. has risen, and continues to rise. It should be no surprise that the more active people became, the more the polls started to swing away from a Tory majority. The Harper Government may not be licked yet, but at least we have hope. And most of us still have our spleens.

And when the ballots are cast on Monday, 2 May 2011, we’ll just have to hope that that’s enough.

Now, I will admit that I was walking in to my office a bit later than usual today, but it seemed to me to be a bit unnaturally dead around town. Cafes – usually quite crowded – were sparsely populated; the hordes of students that usually mill about campus and the surrounding areas seemed by a trickle. Yes, it’s true that classes are over, but there are still exams to be had, and in my experience that usually means more students out en masse. It’s also relatively warm out today- granted, not as sunny as it was last week, but 11 degrees in Edinburgh is nothing to sneeze at, and yet the Meadows – usually packed with students playing football, people walking their dogs, frisbees winging about all willy-nilly – was nearly empty. It’s all very suspicious.

And then there are the sirens. In a 25 minute walk, I counted six emergency services vehicles that sped past me, sirens a-blarin’, lights all a-flashin’. It’s not atypical to see one, even two, on an average walk, but six? And even now I can hear two more passing by the campus.

It all lead up to an unnerving sense that something huge was going on beneath my very nose, but what? Of course it could be a major fire (please not my flat), or car crash, or a massive protest that has been going on in secret today, but my mind immediately leapt to the only rational conclusion: zombies.

If I irrationally fear it, it must be so.

I tried to remain calm. Hyper-vigilant, yes, but also calm. The worst thing to do in a potential zombie apocalypse is to cause a panic which could attract the rotting villains, and prevent you from slipping away unnoticed to your well-stocked fortress of a flat (provided it hasn’t burned down in the massive fire you conjured up in your mind to explain away the symptoms of a zombie apocalypse).

And then: incontrovertible proof. I, myself, came face-to-face with the living dead. Or a drunk. But I think we would all agree that, logically, he was most likely the living dead. His skin was dirty, his hair matted. He shuffled unsteadily towards me – the eyes with which he fixed a blank stare upon me were blood red – a horror to behold.

As I came within feet of him I froze in terror. He, too, stopped, staring at me and swaying. The door to the building which houses my office – and the limited security it provides – was directly behind him. I had once before been faced with this dilemma: to attack, and risk assault charges should I be proven wrong in my assumption that this man was a reanimated corpse (unlikely); to run, and hope that I could find some refuge nearby in which to hide; or to act naturally, and thus submit myself to a potential savaging at the hands of this skin-eating monster simply to project a facade of ignorance and normality? The world might see him as a homeless man, or a rather shabby drunk, but I knew what he really was. And so the question became whether he would attack, or whether I would, or whether we would both pass by, he pretending he did not want to devour my pancreas and I pretending I was not a moment away from decapitating him with a shovel.

This time we each allowed the other to live, but if it has started in Edinburgh – and I truly fear it may have – how long before the bloodshed breaks out into the streets and the world awakes to discover a zombie slobbering away on their tibia? The time has come – only constant vigilance and chainsaws can save us now.

Not many people are aware of the risk involved when encountering a zombie. Your loss will be much greater than anything you can lose casino gambling or playing dangerous sports. A zombie can not only cause you physical injuries they can also damage your mental health. Please read more about zombies to help minimize your risk of injury if you do come in contact with one. Fighting zombies is risky business, like playing poker. You don’t want to be caught off guard while you play casino games. See how you can protect yourself or risk losing it all!

Now, this website offers substantial evidence of its expertise and reliability in its collection of useful pages, such as information on zombie biology, mythology, history, and sociology. It’s essentially like two years of secondary education utterly devoted to zombies. I find it highly unlikely that such a deep mine of brilliantly dazzling knowledge and dazzling knowledge-related brilliance would compose such a bizarrely worded communication to the world wide web. The whole thing reads like the unwanted baby of a one night stand between a highly respected Zombiologist and a leaky spam filter. So what gives?

A message: a secret, encoded message. Now, not being a professional code-breaker I can only speculate as to its true meaning, but given the obvious prevalence of words referring to gambling or related activities I suspect that the author of this website has discovered the infiltration of the gambling community by the living dead.

The days when losing your house and your family was the worst-case scenario are over, pal.

Consider, for example, the final lines: “You don’t want to be caught off guard while you play casino games. See how you can protect yourself or risk losing it all!” It seems the zombies have devised a devious method of creeping their way into a reliable food source. As the FVZA’s database points out, zombies “show a surprising adaptability when it comes to hunting. Contrary to popular opinion, they are observant, fast learners.” As the global community has become increasingly connected via the internet, our understanding of zombies and our awareness of the very real threat that they pose has no doubt infringed upon the lifestyle and food supply of the undead hordes.

However, the internet has also encouraged the rise of online gambling, sparking a growth in cases of gambling addiction. The effects of gambling addiction are serious, and similar to any drug or alcohol addict, gambling addicts often find themselves losing everything, including the kitchen sink. If my amateur interpretation of this mysterious communique is correct, then there can be no doubt that zombies are luring hapless gambling addicts into fatal bets and, either by trickery or coercion, luring them into situations where they risk losing not only their wallets but also their pancreas.

Casinos: overpriced beer is no longer your biggest concern

I urge you now to be vigilant; online casino pop-up ads have always been a nuisance, but their presence could be indicative of a threat much more dangerous than that of computer viruses. If you or someone you love take part in online gambling, and if you think you may be, or know someone who may be, at risk of falling prey to this zombie scheme, please contact your nearest gambling addiction helpline, and babble incoherently into the phone about the looming zombie apocalypse and the role that online gambling  plays until men in white lab coats show up and shoot you with a tranquilizer dart.

A padded cell is probably the safest place to be, anyway.

I am proud to be able to say that in areas where this plague has begun to manifest most publicly, a fierce opposition has been established within the community. Today students in Edinburgh, Oxford, London (and here, and here), Plymouth, Essex, Cardiff, Bristol, and Newcastle continued occupations of university buildings – some which have been going on for several days – following yesterday’s national day of sit-ins, walk-outs, and protests.

Like the ever-present small band of survivors in zombie films who barricade themselves in shopping centres, desperately trying to stem the tide of rotting flesh-eaters, these demonstrators find themselves pitted against zombie hordes – albeit of a politico-economic nature. Although their focus has largely been on the Con-Dem government’s education cuts, these specific changes are but representative of a larger concern on the international economic stage.

We find ourselves facing a zombie economy: a shuffling, stumbling, cannibalistic spectre of horror that retains a ghastly echo of life in a form that has long since died. This reanimated corpse of a financial system infects everything it touches, not just political parties but the very way in which we engage with the world around us, our conception of value.

Although perhaps nothing new, the real danger of this zombie economy has gone relatively unnoticed by most of us, cunningly hiding behind the chaos and the panic, until a small band of fighters find themselves standing behind a flimsy set of glass doors, staring at the corpses of a beloved world, now lost, which always seemed so stable and everlasting, but which was always itself divided from its undead reality by a gossamer partition.

The students across the UK who find themselves physically taking on the role of survivors in a zombie film are not the only ones pressed up against that image on the other side of the glass. In the UK, cuts and changes to public sectors across the board have placed the vast majority of the population in the same, even in a worse situation; for many their health and livelihood as well as their freedoms are being sacrificed in the name of economic recovery. World-wide tensions are growing more alarming as the most severe effects of an economic zombieism begin to manifest.

What has been started by students in response to education cuts is a resistance to an increasingly perverse trade-0ff of essential human rights for private financial gain that surely must spread far beyond the student body and encompass all those who find economic zombies tearing at their eyeballs or getting far too intimate with their lower intestines.

A hypocritical “tut-tut”ing with regards to the violence of student protests this month has been heard from not only the government and the media, but from protesters themselves; surely it is a natural reaction to respond to an act of violence with violence again. Nobody seems to hold it against the film survivors when they fight back against a crowd of zombies who are drooling over their left tibia. If a system is predicated on the violence to which it can subject the majority in order to benefit the minority, then that system is never going to respond to “please” and “thank-you” no matter how often you say it.

The zombie movies all seem to end with a return to the norm; unfortunately in this case the norm seems to be zombieism. The question is, then, whether the plucky band of survivors will escape the zombies… only to have them return again in a never-ending series of sequels. At the moment the issue is one of fighting back, defending ourselves against criminal government actions, but when do we start addressing the system which enabled the situation in the first place?

But then I looked at the examples he gives of potential economic “zombies” – the U.S. debt, a global demographic wave of ageing that will soak up savings, currency issues, and global water wars, to be specific – and I started to think about the kind of effect that any one of these catastrophes would have on our society. Personally, I like to believe that maybe it would serve as the kind of crisitunity by which we could undertake the restructuring of the very fabric of our society, creating a blissful paradise without debts so large they lose entirely any meaning; a world where the concept of value actually holds some degree of relevance and there is a 77% chance that I could ride a goat without being charged for disturbing the peace.

Well, at least the economic zombies will be sharply dressed.

At the moment, it doesn’t seem like that is the case. Initially it seemed as though the signs were restricted to the UK, but recent events have made it quite clear that the symptoms are spreading to the US, and even to my beloved Canadia. There has been an outbreak in mental zombieism more terrifying and deadly than that time I unknowingly stumbled onto a local zombie walk on my way to return a chainsaw to the hardware shop up the road.

It started in May with the UK’s disturbing 2010 Elections results, but, to my deep regret, I failed to recognise the tragedy for what it truly was. I bemoaned the situation, I insulted the parties (and the party leaders, and the voters that voted for them, and the system that let such a horrific mess develop), but in my folly I looked no further. The UK public was doing exactly what Jim Jubak, in his infinite wisdom, warns against: panicking. In the aftermath of the first of what I am sure will be many global economic tremors, the country was, to quote Jubak, “run[ning] hither when yon would have been safer.”

I wish I could assume a position of self-righteous superiority, but in truth I, too, failed to follow Jubak’s advice; I simply denied my fears. Sure, I can give you a line or two about how I couldn’t have known, couldn’t have seen it coming, but the truth is that I suspected the election was the first sign of the socio-political zombieism that was upon us and I ignored those fears. And, as Jubak predicted, I am amongst the first to die a horrible, horrible death.

Jubak saw this coming...

Not literally, of course, but a figurative disembowelment is no less excruciating I can assure you. Am I being melodramatic? Perhaps. But last month – over a week before George Osborne announced the Coalition government’s economic equivalent of a nation-wide slaughter to a nauseating wave of Conservative cheers – the not-entirely-honourable Lord Browne, Baron of Madingley and former CE of the now-infamous BP, published his Independent Review of Higher Education Funding and Student Finance.

If you think he wouldn't gnaw on your clavicle, you've got another thing coming.

If ever there was proof that an infection was seething in the brains of certain UK citizens that reduced their mental faculties to a state equal to drooling, shuffling zombie hordes, the Browne Review was it. Some of my favourite highlights include the removal of the £3290 tuition fees cap in England (allowing for tuition fees of up to £9000 per year, a completely reasonable astronomical sum which should naturally be affordable by students from all backgrounds), the raising of loans from £2,900 to £3,250 – giving students an additional £350 which I am sure will be a great comfort to them in the face of tuition fees which may be nearly triple their maximum loan amount, and the not-explicitly-stated-but-very-real-threat to funding for Arts and the Humanities research (Martin McQuillan suggests a 100% cut, and while other interpretations are more vague, they’re in no way reassuring).



I don't think there was ever any doubt in anyone's mind that these two would feast on a baby. I mean even before their minds melted into zombie-fied goo.

Just in case you thought this cannibalistic pestilence was limited to a single review council, as I mentioned above, not a week later the oh-so-magnanimous Chancellor Osborne stood before the nation and confirmed that it had spread throughout the Conservative party at the very least. This is the only logical explanation for why any human being would possibly cheer at cuts totalling £81bn, the large majority of which seek to suck the very life out of the most vulnerable members of the population: getting rid of wheelchairs and turning the poor and the elderly out onto the streets means a veritable feast for the ever-growing, ever-rotting Conservative party.

Furthermore, it would seem as though the zombie disease can be transmitted sexually; if Nick Clegg’s fervent defence of the cuts is any indicator, the Liberal Democrats have joined the rising hordes.

Of course, as much as one might want to believe that the zombie invasion was limited to the Eastern side of the Atlantic, that particular illusion was shattered earlier this week by the US Mid-term Elections, which saw the biggest swing in Senate seats since 1948 – and at least that swing was somewhat towards reason. If the Browne review didn’t convince you that an unknown pathogen was liquifying people’s brains, driving them to claw blindly at the innards of their children and neighbours, to tear into the fleshy backsides of their local grocers, to rend muscle from bone and drink the very marrow of their significant others, then surely the Tea Party Movement will provide you with the incontrovertible proof that you need.

There's a new mindless horde in town, and they're not interested in tea with their sweetbreads.

“Such a trend must surely not go unmarked!” I hear you cry. “The media – that bastion of truth, fortress of liberty – would direct our innocent eyes to such carnage!” I would wonder if you had considered the latest run of films that have been given pride of place on BBC iPlayer: Dawn of the Dead (1978) – no longer available; Night of the Living Dead (1968); and most recently Day of the Dead, which was broadcast nearly a full week after Hallowe’en.

Someone in the BBC has certainly given some consideration to the infection plaguing both political parties and electorates, and specifically to its proliferation. They are sending out a message, but a message only those with enough of a brain to recognise it will see. To broadcast the truth from the rooftops is to spark the Zombie Apocalypse which is already brewing under our noses. Watch the news carefully…

And don’t sleep with a Conservative… just in case.

I am torn between overwhelming desire for the man and deep-seated jealousy of his fabulous moustache.

I think there is some possibility that Edgar Allan Poe was writing about the zombie apocalypse. In fact, I am quite sure of it.

Allow me to outline, now, a brief exploration of the text in question (see the link provided to follow along as we go) in support of my theory.The story itself is markedly similar to “The Masque of the Red Death”, but passages of “Shadow” are interesting in their own right. The narrator, Oinos, speaks of the onset of a “year of terror, and of feelings more intense than terror for which there is no name upon the earth,” during which time “many prodigies and signs had taken place, and far and wide, over sea and land, the black wings of Pestilence were spread abroad.” Of course, any global pandemic would inspire terror, but to my mind only the visitation of the risen dead could spawn nameless feelings more intense than terror. What else is capable of sending the mind reeling beyond even terror than the prospect of death itself animated and feasting upon the fragile flesh of your forearm? Not much, unless spiders are involved.

Oinos, we then discover, is barricaded in a well-stocked hall in the city of Ptolemais: “And to our chamber there was no entrance save by a lofty door of brass: and the door… being of rare workmanship, was fastened from within. Black draperies, likewise, in the gloomy room, shut out from our view the moon, the lurid stars, and the people-less streets – but the boding and the memory of Evil, they would not be so excluded.” Why the need to bolt a heavy brass door from the inside? Why block out the world with blackness? What disease could inspire such precautions? The answer, of course, is one which aggressively, nay – violently pursues its victims, which is capable of physically slicing open their kidneys, of feasting on their marrow.

"I, Oinos, felt that the eyes of the departed were upon me"

The narrator goes on: “There were things around us and about of which I can render no distinct account – things material and spiritual – heaviness in the atmosphere – a sense of suffocation – anxiety – an, above all, that terrible state of existence which the nervous experience when the senses are keenly living and awake, and meanwhile the powers of thought lie dormant. A dead weight hung upon us.“  Suspended in a state beyond terror, suffocated with the weight of death in the atmosphere, surrounded by that which cannot be rendered, which is so indistinct it almost cannot be fixed upon, which evokes a terrible state of being wherein one is filled with the greatest intensities of life while at the mind lies as if dead – Romero himself could not have woven a more accurate impression of the atmosphere that would seep throughout the pockets of resistance during the zombie apocalypse.

The candlelight flickers and bends, throwing light on the survivors, carrying our gaze across the furniture, across their pallid faces, across the bottles and glasses of wine on the table, until it lands on “yet another tenant of our chamber in the person of young Zoilus. Dead, and at full length he lay, enshrouded; – the genius and the demon of the scene.” Zoilus, though dead, yet inhabits the chamber as if he lived. He becomes, in fact, the centre of the revellers, all the more present for the determinedly averted glances, “the genius and the demon of the scene”.

Zoilus’ presence is all the more pregnant because of his transformation: his countenance is “distorted with the plague, and his eyes in which Death had but half extinguished the fire of the pestilence, seemed to take such interest in our merriment… Although I, Oinos, felt that the eyes of the departed were upon me, still I forced myself not to perceive the bitterness of their expression.” The face is one of life deformed by the plague of Death – the fire of the disease, the fire of life, has not been entirely extinguished, only transformed. The eyes are still awake, alert, but altered. I imagine that the eyes are lazy-yet-vigilant, relishing the quiet observation of prey, living Death hungrily stalking “those who are to die”.

And then there is Shadow itself, which speaks not in “the tones of one being, but of a multitude of beings, and, varying in their cadences from syllable to syllable, fell duskily upon our ears in the well-remembered and familiar accents of many thousand departed friends.”

"And lo! from among the sable draperies where the sounds of the song departed, there came forth a dark and undefined shadow"

The Shadow of death which hovers over the gruesome body on the floor speaks with the voices of thousands departed, the voices of a mass of dead friends forming together to overwhelm the seven survivors – sounds like zombie imagery to me.

Of course, what is the point, then, in recognising Poe’s 1850 account of the zombie apocalypse? “Shadow”, and similarly “The Masque of the Red Death”, might inspire a reflection on the anxieties and inspiration that characterised Poe’s depiction of a band of haggard survivors, desperately barricading themselves against a world ravaged by a strange and terrifying plague. We might consider the prevalence of zombies in our own culture the past ten years, and make insightful points of comparison sparking intelligent discussion.

Or, we might rightfully recognise that the zombies have been biding their time for 160 years, waiting patiently for accounts of their existence to be rendered fiction, folklore, fantasy. We might discern from this truth that the influx of zombie films, books, websites, marches, and television specials marks their imminent return to power.
If the onslaught truly has begun, then Poe’s tale may also serve to inspire us to hope: humanity lingers on, all was not lost. Whether through outright victory or simple perseverance, we survived. When the tramp of undead feet shakes the very soil beneath us, in small bands we can hope to block out the tide of rotting flesh, stocking up on alcohol, pens, and paper, so that like Poe we can provide a semi-inebriated glimpse of the end of our generation to enlighten the next.

And dammit I am going to use blue ink and there will be no one to stop me…

What an utterly horrifying thought.

And yet it was completely false, for which I think the Columbus Dispatch should be reprimanded and forced to pay retribution to their victims (namely me). If you took the 35 seconds to read it, you’ll have noticed that the story actually deals with the infinitely less terrifying prospect of students studying fictional (or presumably fictional) zombie accounts in film and literature.

Misleading headline notwithstanding, I find the actual report somewhat encouraging. First off, it suggests a mainstream acceptance of the inevitability of the impending Zombie Apocalypse. Second, it also hints at the possibility of a growing trend in academic study of the same. I have already written about mathematic studies into the impact of and defence strategy regarding an outbreak of zombie or zombie-like infection; we now have interdisciplinary studies taking place, which can only result in a greater understanding of what is to come. Finally, and perhaps most positive, this article confirms that in a time of uncertainty – economic recession, war, prejudicial madness, general controversy over anything ever thought, planned, or undertaken – news regarding the study of the Zombie Apocalypse is considered important enough to be posted on the internet.

That’s right, the official location of all the news that’s fit to print (and is 100% accurate), and it plays host yet again to zombie-related stories.

The world is slowly coming around to the mentality of irrational panic and semi-insanity necessary in accepting the reality of, and planning for, the Zombie Apocalypse. As the number of zombie-related news articles online increases, so does the number of people who, like myself and hopefully my many loyal readers, see the truth envisioned in countless zombie movies and similar literature produced in recent decades. They shall be the prepared, and that state of constant hyper-vigilance and twitchy anxiety just might be helps them become one of the final few humans fighting for survival in a post-Apocalyptic wasteland.

And then they will thank me for revealing the truth to them in time…

* Thanks to my friend Cheryl for this link

Part of my ear-to-the-ground responsibilities has involved watching multiple documentaries on apocalyptic conspiracy theories, in an attempt to learn more about the forthcoming zombie uprising. I have also had minions – sorry, friends – keeping their eyes peeled for any useful information about zombie activity. As a result of these two prongs in my overall scheme of zombie defense and world domination uh… puppies… I have uncovered two potential dates for the beginning of the zombie apocalypse – and neither are particularly far off.

The first comes from me from my friend Joanna (codename “Sheepshearer”), who unearthed a brief mention about the zombie apocalypse in this blog post by government official and high priestess of hilarious blaggings, Jenny “The Bloggess” Lawson, who, in a prime-time twitter interview with hard-hitting journalistic paragon “The Shorty Awards”, accidentally let slip a crucial piece of information:

SHORTY: “How will the world change in 2010?”
BLOGGESS: “I’ll work out more. Also? Zombie apocalypse”

She's being tricksy to throw you off the scent; she's totally all up in that gov't

Now, due to The Bloggess’s governmental position – and I know not in what level of government she is involved, but due to the vagueness of her account I can only assume it is the secretive upper echelons – I must interpret this information to be of a highly classified nature, only released in a heart-stopping moment of high-tempers and an intense barrage of questioning during an overwhelming interview process. However, this does lend it some credence: surely if such a secretive and high-ranking government official is so concerned about the immediate danger of a looming zombie apocalypse that she would blurt out classified information, the threat is very real and certainly imminent.

However, being such a secretive and high-ranking gov’t official, it could be part of a clever ruse.

Those in “the know” will be aware of the significance of 21 December, 2012 as the date on which the Mayan calendar predicts the world will come to an end. Conspiracy theorists I mean… crackpots and religious fanatics … Sorry -  “scientists and scholars who are totally not crackpots and religious fanatics” have also gathered evidence of a number of other cultures and individuals whose prophecies and predictions corroborate this theory, including the great Nostradamus (despite the fact that Nostradamus clearly stated his prophecies would continue through to the year 3797, suggesting – unless the prophecies are all about zombies – that he didn’t think the world would end in 2012).

Do you trust this man to tell you when the world will end? Check out his crazy hat...

The only confusion amongst those who predict Doomsday on 21 December 2012 is how, exactly, this apocalypse will come about. If I read into the increasingly obvious signs (greater number of zombie movies; increased concern regarding – and experiments invovling – biological warfare; growing degree of governmental control and security reducing personal freedom of speech, thought, and movement; mathematic studies proving our vulnerability to zombie outbreak; the Jonas Brothers; Posh Spice on American Idol…) it becomes clear to me – and indeed to anyone with half a brain – that the end of the world will, in fact, merely be the end of humankind, and that the end of humankind will be brough about through an epidemic that sweeps the world, leaving death, destruction, and zombies in its wake.

So The Bloggess is telling us that the zombie apocalypse will take place this year, whilst so many predictions suggest 21/12/2012. What gives?

There are two possible answers to that most penetrative question:

1) The Bloggess was misleading us, trying to implant in our minds the inevitability of a zombie apocalypse in 2010 so that we would stop worrying about it when it didn’t happen and go about our daily lives, totally not thinking about where all of that tax money is going and not panicking about the government’s strategies and stockpiling in preparation for the real zombie uprising, which will take place in 2012.

2) The Bloggess is right, and the Zombie Apocalypse will begin sometime in the next 10 months and 1 day, but the human race will struggle against it in an exercise of ever-growing futility until, on 21 December, 2012, the last human succumbs to the zombie hoardes and either noms his own un barrell as the undead appear en-masse on the horizon, or feels the gooey warmth of rotting mouths gumming up his kneecaps and putrid fingers rending his skin in the moments before the infection takes hold and he, too, joins the zombie ranks – now the most powerful species on Earth.

For the next 10 months, the world will hold its breath…